One of the jobs that I both enjoy and hate is for a "collapse behind locked doors" - this is when a (normally elderly) patient hasn't answered the front door or the telephone, and is presumed to be in some trouble. What we often get is someone who has died during the night. Although I hate having people die, the one good thing about this type of job is that I get to use my size 12 boots to kick down a door.

There is a skill to kicking down a door - and I was taught by the best, a policeman. The police also have a huge ram that they can use when their boots aren't enough. These are very heavy, but also very fun to use

We got called to a house where the daughter could see her elderly mother laying on the floor - shouting through the door and banging on windows didn't get any response, so we assumed the worst. The daughter was (understandably) crying, so I had an attempt at kicking the door down.

Unfortunately for me, the woman had been burgled earlier in the year, and so had two locks, and a bolt holding the door shut - so it took a couple of minutes of prolonged (and eventually painful) kicking to get the door open. I managed to wake up all the neighbours, and it's always fun to be the centre of attention...

Finally the door gave up and we gained access, we were greeted by the elderly woman sitting on the floor smiling at us earlier in the morning she had fallen and couldn't get up. When we had tried banging on her windows she had been asleep, and it was only the repeated bashing of my foot against her door that had caused her to wake up.

This was a good job in a number of ways; the lady was happy and healthy - and just needed a hand to get up off of the floor, I got to kick in a door and get away with not causing any serious damage, and finally we looked like heroes to the two daughters of our patient - there were smiles all round and we left the job feeling that we had really been of some use today.